A major aspect of the “Communist plot” narrative circulated by the Birch Society concerned the purported Communist goal of establishing a “Negro Soviet Republic” in the area comprising our southern states.

According to Robert Welch in “The Time Has Come”, a 1964 JBS pamphlet, the Communist civil rights strategy since 1928 was to stir up racial bitterness and rioting while promising “to convert the Dixie states into a Negro Soviet Republic…”

This theme was echoed in a Birch Society national newspaper ad from August 1965 captioned “What’s Wrong With Civil Rights?” and it also was repeated by other JBS-recommended sources such as Dan Smoot and Alan Stang. Welch repeated this argument in section III-B of a 1967 pamphlet entitled “This Is It” when he discussed “The Two Main Planks of Current Communist Strategy”.

By contrast, J. Edgar Hoover pointed out in his January 1960 testimony before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee that the 17th National Convention of the Communist Party USA held in New York City on December 10, 1959 had discarded that Party position:

"The Negro resolution adopted by the convention discarded the party's historic position advocating 'self-determination' meaning that Negroes should be given the right to form a separate nation in the Southern States…The 1959 convention resolution hence represents a party admission that its position concerning Negroes is bankrupt. Time itself has shown that the party is not interested in the welfare of the Negro, but only in using him as a tool to advance party interests." [J. Edgar Hoover: An Analysis of the 17th National Convention of the Communist Party USA; Statement made to Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, 1/17/60, page 7; Also see: FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, March 1960 – for same comment.]

In August 1963, the FBI prepared a comprehensive 76-page summary regarding Communist strategy with respect to our civil rights movement. Below is the pertinent section regarding the Communist strategy regarding “self-determination”

“By this theory of ‘self-determination’, communists meant that in many counties of the southern states Negroes composed a majority of the population and, as a separate race, they constituted a nation with the right, if they so desired, to secede from the United States and form their own nation and government. This concept was adhered to and developed by the CPUSA for nearly 30 years…The policy of ‘self-determination’ was questioned more and more in Party circles following Stalin’s death in March 1953. In December 1958, some members pointed out that the Party, through its adherence to such a position, was in effect advocating the segregation of Negroes from the rest of the population. Members of the Party’s National Committee recommended that the policy of ‘self-determination’ be modified or abandoned. However, they did not dare make a change without Soviet approval. As a consequence, in February 1959, James Jackson, a top leader of the CPUSA and a delegate to the 21st Congress of the CP of the Soviet Union in Moscow, presented the proposed change to the Soviets for their endorsement. Upon his return to this country, Jackson reported to Party leaders that the Soviets had approved discontinuing the policy of ‘self-determination’. In December 1959, the CPUSA, at its 17th National Convention, adopted a resolution which brought an end to the 30-year-old policy of ‘self-determination’. The resolution replaced it with a call for equality for the Negro throughout the United States in all phases of political, social, and economic life-
--in other words, full and complete integration.” [FBI-HQ 100-3-116, serial #253X = 8/23/63 FBI monograph “Communist Party USA—Negro Question”, pages 5-6].

Significantly, FBI informants inside the Party who attended the Party's National Convention also confirmed this change of strategy. Some of those informants (like Lola Belle Holmes) subsequently became paid speakers for the Birch Society -- but the JBS just ignored their comments because the JBS was ideologically committed to defaming all civil rights leaders and our civil rights movement.